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Man shot dead in entertainment district wanted for first-degree murder

The man shot and killed in a confrontation with police in Toronto’s entertainment district early Saturday was wanted on first-degree murder charges in the deaths of two men last month.

Kwasi Skene-Peters, 21, had been on the run since June 28 when two men were found shot dead at the end of a raucous three-day party in a 22nd-floor condo unit near Queen St. and Dovercourt Rd.

Police on the scene of a shooting near Peter and Adelaide Sts. early Saturday. One man was taken to hospital in life-threatening condition following the incident. (John Hanley photo)

Several yellow evidence markers are visible around parked cars near Tryst nightclub near Peter and Adelaide Sts. early Saturday after a shooting there sent a man to hospital in life-threatening condition. The white vehicle pictured has several bullet holes in the windshield. (Kenyon Wallace / Toronto Star)

Kwasi Skene-Peters, 21, has been identified to the Star as the man killed early Saturday in the entertainment district. The SIU is investigating. (Toronto police photo)

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, which is now looking into Saturday’s shooting, said police officers approached a vehicle on Peter St. shortly after 2 a.m. Saturday and had an “interaction” with a man. The man was shot and taken to St. Michael’s Hospital, where he died just before 4 a.m.

Police are not allowed to comment when the SIU invokes its mandate.

In a prescient twist, Skene-Peters, who spent several years of his short life in and out of the juvenile detention system, once stated in an interview with researchers looking at young people in conflict with the law that the “world is going to see a monster” when he was released from youth jail.

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“Sir, if that judge thought I was a monster as he described us at sentencing, the world is going to see a monster when I get out of this hell hole — this place made me a monster, every day I am literally fighting for my life,” a 16-year-old Skene-Peters told researchers Chris Williams, Devon Jones and Rose-Anne Bailey of his time at the Roy McMurtry Youth Centre in Brampton. Skene-Peters’ comments were published in their 2013 report “From the Margins: Building Curriculum for Youth in Transition.”

The report describes how in September 2005, when Skene-Peters was around 11 years old, he was crossing a footbridge at Jane St. and Driftwood Ave. and came across the body of 24-year-old Andre Burnett. The man had been shot several times and left for dead on the bridge.

The authors ponder the effects such traumatic encounters have on young people.

According to Williams, Jones and Bailey, by the time Skene-Peters was 16, he was serving time at the Roy McMurtry Youth Centre. It was while he was already in custody at the centre, the authors state, that Skene-Peters was charged in the December 2011 Project Marvel raids, in which police forces across Canada simultaneously executed search warrants targeting guns and gangs, resulting in more than 60 arrests.

After being granted bail on the Project Marvel charges, Skene-Peters was arrested again a few months after his eighteenth birthday and charged with a weapons offence, the report says. Toward the end of 2013, he was still in custody awaiting trial.

The authors interviewed Skene-Peters’ mother, who told them that her son’s rearrest and incarceration “stemmed from the challenges he encountered in the course of attempting to register in school and his inability to access reflective services, those pertaining to reintegration in particular.”

Skene-Peters’ troubles seemed only to intensify as he entered his twenties.

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Earlier this month, police issued a warrant for his arrest on two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Abdiwel Abdullahi, 26, and Mohamed Abdiwal Dirie, 26. The two men were found dead in a 22nd-floor unit of a condo just north of Liberty Village on June 28. The shooting deaths of the two men came at the tail end of a three-day party in the unit.

Another man wanted in relation to the June shootings, Kamal Hassan, 23, turned himself in and was charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

Then, in the early hours before dawn Saturday, Skene-Peters’ short life came to a violent end outside Tryst nightclub on Peter St., just south of Adelaide.

Mirage Imani, who lives on the 30th floor of a nearby condo, had a “bird’s-eye view” of the incident. “I heard the shots, which I thought were fairly rapid.”

He then looked out his bedroom window, which overlooks Peter St., and saw at least five police cars and “somebody behind a taxi lying on ground.” Imani said officers started doing CPR on the man before the ambulance came.

Using binoculars, he had counted eight bullet holes in the windshield of a white sedan parked nearby, which had all its doors open and lights on. After the man shot was transported to hospital, Imani says a “big black patch” of blood was left behind on the ground.

Jody Copeland and her husband were staying at the Hilton Garden Inn on Peter St., next door to Tryst, and were getting ready for bed around 2:30 a.m. when they heard gunfire.

“It was rapid, just like fireworks. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,” Copeland told the Star. “We looked out the window and just saw police massing on the scene on their bikes, and then we saw somebody lying on the ground, and the cops had their guns drawn.”

She said an ambulance soon arrived and paramedics began performing CPR on the victim.

“People were yelling ... it was just mayhem.”

Copeland and her husband are Barrie residents who checked into the hotel Friday to visit with friends. They are now stuck in Toronto because their car is parked inside the police tape.

Cristal Camara, 22, says she had just left Tryst around 3:30 a.m. and was sitting in her car in a parking lot adjacent to the club when she heard several loud gunshots that struck a car close to hers.

“I was basically, like, right next to it, you know, within close range,” Camara told the Star Saturday after speaking with police officers in an effort to retrieve her car, which was parked behind the police tape.

Camara said police were on the scene within minutes after the shooting, and quickly surrounded her car and told her to get out and put her hands on the hood. She and a group of about 10 to 15 others were then asked by officers to line up against a wall for questioning, Camara said.

“They wanted to know who was involved, right?”

After about 30 minutes, she said, the group was released. But Camara wasn’t allowed to take her car because it was parked close to the scene of the shooting. As of Saturday afternoon, she still hadn’t gotten it back.

On Saturday, investigators closely examined a white Ford Focus sitting in a parking lot next to Tryst that had 10 bullet holes in its windshield. Cars on either side also looked to have been hit by gunfire.

The SIU, which probes incidents involving police where there has been death, serious injury or allegations of sexual assault, says there are five investigators and four forensic investigators currently on the case.

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